Seeking buyers in unusual Sarasota auction

Buyers offered more than $3.3 million Wednesday for 14 commercial properties at an auction in Sarasota.

They bid on office and retail buildings, industrial properties and vacant lots in Sarasota and Manatee counties with hopes of snagging deals from motivated sellers.

"What's the commercial market like? I'll tell you at the end of the day," Ian Black, whose real estate company put together the auction with Auction World USA, said before the bidding started.

None of the deals are guaranteed to go through. The owners can accept or reject the offers by Friday or negotiate different prices, Black said, noting that some of the properties had not had offers in months.

Only two of the 16 properties up for auction failed to get a bid. Another received an offer before the auction and was pulled from the line up.

"I'm very happy with the outcome," Black said later. "We are now negotiating on 15 properties, and that doesn't happen very often in our profession."

Rather than offering the properties one at a time - in what Black said was a first for Sarasota - auctioneer Mark Henderson drummed up the highest dollar offer, and that bidder then selected the property he wanted.More than 75 people attended the auction at The Francis. Forty-one people registered to bid, Henderson said.

The top bid was $1.2 million for the parcel at the southwest corner of Pineapple Avenue and Ringling Boulevard, a site long targeted for projects that never happened. The bidder declined to identify himself to the Herald-Tribune, saying he was acting as an agent on behalf of the buyer.

Another buyer offered $315,000 for two vacant retail buildings at 1520-22 Fruitville Road in downtown Sarasota.

Investor Sal Diaz-Verson Jr. was not looking to buy, but he bid $200,000 for a two-office, seven-unit medical building at 8400-8460 S. Tamiami Trail in Sarasota.

"I just came in with some friends to observe," he said. "Before I know it, I'm walking out with a property. I didn't plan on doing anything."

He said he believes the medical offices, a total of 14,600 square feet, will be good income producers because they are the type of buildings in demand in the area.

Dr. Arnold Yoskowitz, president of Twin Towers Heritage Realty of Sarasota, offered $310,000 for a vacant two-story office building at 6015 31st St. E. in Bradenton. The 2.5-acre site includes nearly 40,000 square feet of building and a 188-space parking lot.

He said he came to the auction specifically to buy it.

"We will look at alternative uses for the property to make it more attractive to the current commercial market, possibly subdividing the building to make more units that are easier to occupy," Yoskowitz said.

A retail store at 1506 Fruitville went for $450,000. It had been on the market for $925,000.

A one-story office condo in the Pine Park Office Park on the South Trail landed a $305,000 offer, while a vacant one-acre lot zoned commercial at 608 Manatee Ave. E. in downtown Bradenton brought a $275,000 bid.